Satan (Amiga)

Black Tiger is something of an unsung hero in Capcom's late 80s arcade oeuvre. Though it's a great game, it never achieved the level of fame enjoyed by the likes of Ghosts and Goblins or 1942. In fact, though it got ported to various microcomputers in Europe, the first official console port didn't come until 2010, 23 years after its debut! Despite being mostly forgotten, though, it does have its advocates. For example, the first time I encountered it was a fan-made port on the Korean handheld the GP32 in the early-mid 00s, and it had a rethemed spiritual sequel in the form of Sonson 2 on the PC Engine in 1989. Why is all of this relevant? Because the first half of Satan is clearly very influenced by Black Tiger, further cementing its place as a minor cult hit, despite having fallen from the collective conciousness.

Satan's plot is about a warrior who wants to kill the eponymous demon, but realises he needs to become a wizard to do so. To become a wizard, he journeys through some kind of subterranean world killing monsters and collecting money and power ups, until he faces off against what looks like a white dragon from Castlevania. Then his wizardly diploma falls from the 'bove, he grows a beard, and sets out on the second part of the quest. This bit is okay, like a poor man's Black Tiger, pretty much. But Black Tiger is really good, so that's not too harsh a criticism.

The game's second half has you playing as the newly-qualified wizard, using money to buy spells with which you fight Satan himself, who, upon defeat, splits into two and then four flying demons. There's also something about rescuing captured wizards before Satan can kill them, but this is where the game reveals itself to be broken: those wizards are all on platforms that are too high to reach. It seems like there's a whole exploratory part of this half of the game that's just totally inaccessible because your jump isn't high enough. You can still fight and kill Satan in his various forms, though if you go back to the shop once he starts flying, there's a good chance that when you come back outside, he'll be offscreen somewhere, killing wizards with impunity.

It really is a shame, as like I've mentioned on this blog before, it often feels as if the Amiga is a system that coasts by on nostalgia, and doesn't really have many actual good games, and Satan is so close to being a good game. It just lets itself down with one stupid mistake in the latter half. Tragic!

Tank Racer (Playstation)

This game's title tells you pretty much everything about its premise: it's a racing game, but with tanks. You can even shoot at each other as much as you want! That's really it, I don't have anything more to put into this opening paragraph, sorry.

So, it's a British-developed game, which is obvious from the first two tracks: a pretty authentic-feeling little country village with a church and a duck pond and so on, followed by a very silly, inauthentic-feeling depiction of the USA-Mexico border. You can also tell that it's a western-developed game from the late 90s, since there are UFOs on some of the menu backgrounds, and there's a UFO power up ingame, too (though it's pretty rare, and I missed my shot every time I got it, so unfortunately, I can't tell you what it does).

How does it actually play though? Eh, it's alright. I was disappointed that the tanks just control like the cars do in any other racing game, where you hold the accellerator and steer left and right. I would have been much more interesting if you had left and right accelerators, one for each tank tread, and you steered by letting go of one of them (like how Steambot Chronicles/Bumpy Trot would have you controlling its walking vehicles a few years later. I really like that control method, actually, and I'd love to see it in a high speed racing game someday).

Also, though you can shoot your tank's cannon as much as you like, it's the weakest-feeling tank cannon I think I'v ever used in a game, as whether you're hitting an enemy or taking a hit yourself, it barely seems to have any effect at all. I guess the developers had to make a choice between making a fast and fair racing game, or a manic one with powerful weapons that could get incredibly frustrating. I'm not sure which would have been the best choice, actually, so I can't really be too hard on the game for that.

There's a few other small, nitpicky problems, too, like how some parts of stages are destructible and some aren't, but I think that's just the fault of the Playstation's hardware limitations (on the other hand, though, other games like Rollcage did a better job of hiding those limitations when it came to what you could and couldn't smash on their tracks). The biggest problem this game has is just the fact that it's on Playstation, and it can't hold a candle to the monolithic might of Ridge Racer Type 4, nor is its unusual theming strong enough to make it an interesting novelty. So, like I said a few paragraphs up: eh, it's alright.